Have a rant: HR recruitment

I have to add my own rant about how bad HR departments are at recruiting their own staff.

I can appreciate that people hold back because it might seem like sour grapes for not getting the job, but your pages have recently been full of horror stories about HR candidates’ experiences (Letters, Personnel Today, 23 May).

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In the course of my own campaigns to secure future contracts or permanent employment, I have been annoyed by the following:

• Lack of any feedback from either the agency or the employer. Employers don’t bother when using recruitment agencies.
  
• Despite knowing my geographic location (East Anglia), there is never any mention about paying any expenses, when in a number of cases an overnight stay was the only way to get to a 9am interview in south-west London. The only organisation that offered was a charity.
  
• Employers not being prepared. I know it is common practice to test the candidate to see if the CV stacks up, but in the introductory warm-up it is obvious if they haven’t bothered to read the CV.
  
• Being told that you will be called back, and months pass without hearing what happened.
  
• Being interviewed (at length, via convoluted competency-based interviews) only to be told that an internal HR team candidate got the job.
  
• Hearing the company had suddenly imposed an external recruiting ban.
  

Frankly, HR should know better than to treat people like this.